Web Assignment 2--Done!

Responses to the New Child Exhibit by English 441A Students

(Click here to see the original assignment)

Fall, 1996
Miami Univ. of Ohio
Prof. Laura Mandell

Many students commented on Allan Ramsay's Portrait of a Dead Child:

Laura Muthler: I was very disturbed by [this sketch]. The child seemed as if it were just sleeping. The peace of the child, the face, the black halo surrounding the child's head seemed to suggest a dream state. . . . [The picture] contrasts sleep with death; perhaps its function is to ease the fear of death.

Kendra Lacey: But what comes out in the artist's portrayal of this child . . . is that a child can show great signs of peace and life even while dead.

Stephen Koenig: The image is captivating. Everyone wishes for a peaceful death, and this child seems to have died quite peacefully. . . . [D]eath does not seem negative or forbidding.

Scott Cunningham: I think that this picture looks incredibly real--with the disheveled hair and the shine on the face. It seems that this painting is a bit different from a lot of others [of] its time in that it shows youth instead of a little adult. . . . He almost looks like he is pleasantly sleeping (he's smiling).

Charles Lippert: [T]he title seems to be in contrast with the actual representation. . . . I believe [that] this artist thinks of children as beautiful creatures and also as innocent . . . . One might also infer from the title of the sketch that this innocence is something that cannot be claimed for life but is only treasured in a child.

and George Morland's Blind Man's Bluff:

Erica Lell: It fit all my preconceived notions of how children looked "in the old days." . . . However, the children in this painting were probably from an upperclass family, whereas the children from a poorer family probably wouldn't enjoy as much time outdoors--or if they did, it was to work.

Mike West: The painter captures the children in a purely blissful state, at once grasping both the realms of innocence and of a magical happiness that is lost as children enter adolescence.

and Sir Joshua Reynolds's The Infant Academy

Christy Ciraolo: I think that this painting pretty much sexually exploits the little ones . . . . These children look way more adult than their few years [warrant]. . . . Reynolds tries to pass [the little girls] off as sensual, voluptuous women, instead of as innocent, sweet children.

Kevin McFadden: The painting was amusing to me because Academe and the state of childhood innocence seem strange when juxtaposed.

A few wrote about Hogarth's paintings and prints, among them on The Children's Party

Kristi Murnahan: There is a very soft quality to these children. They look very beautiful. One of the most outstanding, eye-catching features of this picture is a chain of brightly-colored flowers lace around a pillar behind [the children]. It looks like an enchanting play place.

John McEvoy: The painting of of a group of children having a party, except it isn't really like a party at all. . . . It doesn't really look like they are having fun. None of them are smiling, not even the boy playing the drum. The artist is portraying these children as little adults.

Hogarth's Study for The Foundlings

Jodi Thompson: I think that the abandoned child shows the failure of the charitable intentions of the workhouse to reach the children who really need help, while the child is taken from the obviously Christian, though poor, mother.

Hogarth's The House of Cards:

Scott Wendeln: Hogarth depicted the children in this print as small adults. In class, we discussed how they are dressed as adults, but I first noticed that their faces were long, hard, and aged. . . . [T]he expression on [the face of the girl on the right side of the card house] is not consistent with her actions. Like the boy waving the flag wildly, she has no wonder in her face.

Jenny Hartman: [T]hese five children don't look like children at all. They simply look like small adults in hair, dress, and posture. They look slightly happy, but too serious to be having fun. Only the dog appears to be having fun. . . . [Hogarth] represents how children were supposed to be. . . . [It was believed that], by seven years old, children should abandon all play and start practicing adult reason. I think Hogarth bought into this ideology . . . .

Mary Clare Cahill: This painting . . . reflects . . . [a] confusing transition [between different] ways that children were treated in society. . . . The children in this painting all look like young adults, which was how they were treated before the onset of the "New Child" mentality or movement. . . . It is obvious that the painting was done in a time of transition because the "play" of the children is pretty stuffy. A House of Cards? Please! The dog seems to be the only one having fun.

Hogarth's First Stage of Cruelty

Tom Pierie: In this engraving, children are portrayed by the artist as evil and cruel. . . . The children depicted by Hogarth appear to be at the age of the beginning of adolescence and this is a difficult period for children. I do not agree that children are out of control all of the time, but they do go through stages where proper discipline is necessary. Children are not always as evil as this engraving shows them to be.

Others besides Hogarth:

John Augustus Atkinson's Going to School

Tim Gugerty: [The boy's] shadow . . . takes us directly from him into nature, [the woods on the right]. He is the raw academic. His true learning is on his own, inspired by nature--not at home or even in school.

William Mulready's Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go; and When He is Old He Will Not Depart from It

Jennifer McLain: [For Mulready,] the child is something that can be trained by example and through hands-on experience. . . . [T]he picture's two female figures . . . bend over him guiding his actions [in order to teach him] his obligation to those not as fortunate as himself. . . . This painting looks like a posed lesson in child morality, rather than a depiction of any realities.

Joseph Wright's The Wood Children

Eric Hoffman:I think that the painter wanted to portray the different sides that children can have. The little girl looks completely angelic . . . . Her hands [make her] look . . . like someone receiving communion. . . . [As to t]he boy in the middle . . . , his red clothes and stance is in total opposition to the girl . . . . This child looks like innocence lost, kind of evil but without the potency of adulthood evilness. . . . [T]hese children are seen in the woods, as being a natural part of nature and the world around us.

David Allan's The Family of the 7th Earl of Mar at Alloa House

Brian Mislansky: This painting shows parents who were allowing their children to entertain themselves; the son is shooting a bow & arrow, and the daughter seems to be holding a doll. I like this painting because it shows a family that is more relaxed with themselves than earlier paintings do, and because it shows the children playing the gender roles in the family on a smaller scale than the parents.

Richard Wilson's Prince George and Prince Edward Augustus with Their Tutor

Jon Wagner: You don't exactly get the impression from looking at the painting that [these children] are going to beg this guy [the tutor] to go out and play after their lesson.

John Constable's A Suffolk Child

Jeannie Goodwin: Constable attributes this child with a look of world-weariness that I don't think possible for such a young girl.

Strickland Lowry's The Bateson Family

The children look like miniature versions of their parents which is probably what they'll grow up to be.

Henry Walton's Sir Robert and Lady Buxton and their Daughter Anne

Betsy Kenley: It seems that both parents' attention is focused strictly on the child, suggesting the importance Henry Walton [placed on] raising children. . . . The disarray of the room in general could [indicate] the freedom Sir Robert and Lady Buxton have given to Anne during her childhood.

Sir Joshua Reynolds's Mrs. John Spencer and Her Daughter

Laura Muthler: In this picture there is a very young and beautiful woman. She is painted with so much detail and light, the pearls on her neck seem to glow. In the upper right of the painting is a portrait of her daugher. The mother is not holding the daughter; the two are very distinct; in fact it is really only a bust of the child, so we get the idea that this is not a picture of a real life, mother-and-child situation, . . . . that the painting was unfinished because the two representations of humans [in it are] so radically different.

Kerry Morris: There is no suggestion of a father here in this picture. It looks like the picture is trying to portray the child's dependence on the mother . . . .

Thomas Gainsborough's Peasant Smoking at Cottage Door

Randy Leshin: No signs of poverty are evident within the painting. The clothing of the family seems to be in pretty good shape, and they don't seem to be struggling with their surroundings. . . . To me, Gainsborough has missed many of the problems that might cause this family suffering.

Thomas Gainsborough's Two Shepherd Boys with Dogs Fighting

Areasa Owens: These two shepherd boys are watching the dogs fight instead of breaking it up. I believe that this picture is realistic about children being intrigued by violence.

Gordana Vucenovic: [Gainsborough's] portrait of the rural boys, projecting the good life [onto poverty for] the upper classes, denies the real hardships of poverty. . . . . The ugliness [of it] is not conveyed and therefore [the representation] is dangerous. If we go on believing the images that are put out [by people such as Gainsborough,] we deny and reduce the pain of real life.